Warren: My then manager, Andrew Slater, had introduced me to Peter Buck, his old college roommate.
It doesn't mean you need to get back together, but there's something between you.Every day I get up in the morning and go to work I don't think that goes away, when it's that deep and abiding. I didn't have to deal with the really hard stuff. The best friends part of our relationship survived everything else, and in a lot of ways, for me, I got the best of Warren. On balance, would I have not been with him? I think I'd have to say: I would have been with him. One of our moments in the last week, he cried. But it was people who felt "I'd wanna drink if I had a death sentence." If only enough people had said, "You don't really want to go out like that do you?' In the end, he was too sick to drink. No one who knew Warren as a drunk helped him to drink. They were pouring vodka into his Mountain Dew can. He was surrounded by a lot of people who had never known him when he was drinking and wanted one night with "the Excitable Boy." So they covered for him, brought him liquor and so on. Q: He got better, but had a major relapse in the final months but then turned it around again nearing death's door, right?Ī: Yes, he had a major relapse. He threw his coffee cup at me, when I walked in. I went out to get the car and when I came back he had found a bottle of cooking sherry and had drank that and found some Darvon. And somehow in the morning, as often happens with alcoholics if something gets too good, it's more scary than dealing with the bad stuff. We were putting our lives together and got in a hot tub, and laughed and had a great time. We went out all day picking out fabulous stereo equipment for the house in Santa Barbara. He was recording "Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School" (in 1979). He had been sober for a few months, maybe six months. Q: Did you leave when he was still drinking or after he stopped?Ī: He had stopped and then he started drinking again. "¦ I was trying to make the relationship work, because when he wasn't that way we did have great times. I think that was true not just for me but what happens with alcoholics in general.
He would know something happened, but he didn't know specifically. For the most part, I would tiptoe around, not trying to make waves. The only time he ever struck me that he remembered was one time he left and came back and I had a black eye and made him confront it. He didn't have a real memory of it, he was in a real black out. Something I recognized way late was Warren's physical abuse. Q: I interviewed Warren's sometime collaborator, the satirical novelist Carl Hiaasen, in 2010 and he said when he knew Warren he was already sober and he didn't recognize that self-destructive drunk.Ī: I think it's probably true. I suppose there was an element of narcissism to it, but I think Warren knew that he had a genius IQ and had a certain talent, and if that was ever recognized, he felt it was important for the person who was behind that to be recognized for who he was, the torment and the cost I guess. I think he felt there might be value in it. Q: Why did he want this unvarnished truth?Ī: I think Warren, at his core, had a super sense of morality, and I think for him it was almost like going into the confessional. There was a purging, which was a good thing, For me, personally, it exorcised a lot of demons and allowed me to have a pretty clear and clean relationship with Warren, with his memory and his spirit. There are other people who are alive and are involved in that truth. I talked to him before he died, and he made me promise that I would tell the whole truth, even the "awful ugly parts," as he put it. Q: What was your goal in writing the book?Ī: My goal was to tell his story truthfully, which is what he asked me to do. I spoke with her last month by phone from her Vermont home. She was his confidant in good times and bad. Though Warren and Crystal were divorced, they remained friends.
What it's not, though, is the vengeful work of a spurned ex. Yes, there's Warren's genius.īut the book is filled with booze, drugs and lots of unhealthy relationships. It's a difficult read, unflinching and at times tawdry and degrading. Crystal Zevon, Warren's ex-wife, wrote his biography, "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" and published it in 2007.
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